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January 14, 2009

Excited About Smoltz

It was in early December when John Farrell, Ben Cherington and Mike Reinold went to Atlanta to watch John Smoltz throw a 50-pitch side session. It was Smoltz's second time throwing since his surgery, but he was confident.

Nick Scherer, the Director of Operations for the Georgia Tech baseball team, was catching:

I'm standing back there ready to get this warm-up pitch. Then, all of a sudden, here comes this 92 mph fastball, low and away, that doesn't touch my glove. I immediately thought, "I better get down now. He's ready to go."

He starts mixing in his slider, and I'm like, "All right, it has a nice late break and it's hard." But then he was like, "Now I'm going to throw a curveball," and he breaks off this 12-to-6 that totally fools me. And then he starts saying we're going to throw split-fingers, changeups, and a little of this and that. I'm like, "Good Lord Smoltzy, you're ready to pitch, aren't you?!"

Reading this melted about a foot of snow from my winter mind. The potential upside of this signing is ridiculously exciting.

"Doesn't it seem a little odd that when you have a ball player (Roger Clemens) who lies to Congress about steroid use in baseball, the U.S. Attorney for DC convenes a grand jury to consider a perjury indictment, but when an official of the Justice Department (Bradley Schlozman) lies to Congress about trying to politicize the civil service within DOJ, the U.S. Attorney fo DC passes on further investigation or prosecution? Which really seems like the more significant problem for the country?"